It may, suddenly, strike one as a startling, although, actually not premature, realization that year 2018 is presently approaching its denouement. The eternal and inexorable, drip, drip, drip, of the faucet of empirical time persists, independently, and in disregard of the varied cornucopia of annual events, whether celebratory or tragic.
The timeless, apparently identical, human persona, is perpetually and classically confronted by the eternal issues, regardless of temporal context, social or technological advance. [Please note:We have, therefore, as a means of acquiring useful, mature perspective, emphatically recommended the reading of good literature, which is consistently demonstrative of the analogous human condition appearing in every age, similarly confronted by identical issues.]
On each January 1, we ritually celebrate the passage of the previous year, and the arrival of a replacement, with hopeful vistas of improvement, perhaps, in relationships, business, weight control, and other matters of personal aspiration. We do so, despite the persistence of warfare in the world, natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, forest fires, and virtually, the entire world-wide theater of individual and societal events. We continue to witness greed and astronomically increasing profit-making of the few, and the hunger and dire need of the many. We have, more recently, experienced the phenomenon of an unfortunate “tribal” division in our nation; the existence of insular groups of citizens sharing mutual agreement on contested issues, in anti-social relationship, with other like groups of disparate opinion (rather than the useful conduct of amicable and responsible debate, foreseen and encouraged, by our Founding Fathers).
We have, on a yearly basis, sadly witnessed in the media, mass shootings of innocent people, acts of national and international terror, crime and reactive criminal punishment, and by contrast, within the diverse human panorama, positive developments such as advances in medical science and the resultant increase in good health and longevity, developments in the general sciences, including computer science; we have seen acts of admirable heroism, advances in civil rights and, very importantly, advances in general knowledge.
However, this past year, singularly and unprecedentedly, witnessed the opening of a veritable “Pandora’s Box” of nightmarish and unspeakable horrors, directly resulting from America’s shocking elevation to the Oval Office, as stated, of an ignorant , egotistic, and incapable, former television game- show host and real estate gonif. It is our understanding and belief that his surprising win, was enabled by the mass voting of a usually non- voting portion of the population, consisting of low-information, flat earth people, who were tactically energized by demagogic, snake-oil promises of Valhalla, financed by special, monied, anti-regulation interests, that cynically value profit above human and planetary health.
We have not, in our life-time, been witness to a comparable loss of face suffered by our nation, both, within our own country, and internationally, the proximate and indisputable cause of which, is the dishonorable persona, and entirely abject incapability, of the current American President.
Despite any and all egotistic fantasies about himself, our esteemed President has been obliged, defensively, to articulate a daily and steady stream of observable mendacity, [probably, for him, an innate skill] and to disparage the ethical institution of truth, in order to rearrange his personal perception of the “Tower of Babel”artless disgrace, which has defined his Presidency, and his selected Administration. It is, undoubtedly for this reason, that he has emulated certain of his autocratic friends in attacking the responsible media for printing “false news.”
Among the rare instances in which Mr. Trump has been clear, are his positions against immigration ‘[ in a nation composed 100% by immigrants and their progeny], denial of the need for climate control, as demanded by the world’s accredited scientists, regulation of guns [in the face of innumerable instances of mass and individual homicide], affordable health care for all Americans, rights of, and protection for, women, elimination of bigotry and racial prejudice, reform of our prison-industrial complex, regulations to assure the cleanliness of drinking water and food, and government assistance to the poor and needy. But we could go on.
We are fortunate, in this country, to have criminal laws which, apply to everyone, including the President. We did not attempt to recount the many serious offenses, Constitutional, Federal and State, regarding which, it would appear, to us, Mr. Trump is guilty; instead, we confidently, choose to trust in the investigative proceedings of the efficient and law abiding special counsel, who has been diligently investigating the acts of this “Mad Hatter” President. From our vantage point, findings of guilt are certainly to be expected, beginning with the violation of the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution, up to Treason.
The faucet eternally, and inexorably, drips on.
-p,
plinyblogdotcom 